


Sexy Lucky Fruit Basket

by freshcandy



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: Established Relationship, Las Vegas, M/M, Slash, Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-18
Updated: 2016-03-18
Packaged: 2018-05-27 12:18:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6284269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freshcandy/pseuds/freshcandy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On vacation in Las Vegas, Starsky and Hutch take a hike. Overlooking the city, Hutch considers whether Starsky is a goat or a stag or a sexy lucky fruit basket.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sexy Lucky Fruit Basket

“Shall I compare thee to a slot machine?” Starsky snapped his fingers. “Thou art more lovely and more temperamental.”  
 Hutch felt like snapping something other than his fingers. “Starsky, shut up.”  
“I can see my poetry upsets the Desert Prince."  
Starsky overtook him on the narrow sandy path and jogged to the top of the bluff.

 _He looks hot in that stupid shirt_ , Hutch thought angrily. He considered the grown man standing akimbo with _My Cherry Paid Off at Caesar’s Palace_ printed across his substantial chest. It was too narrow in the shoulders, to glorious effect.  

“Starsky, no. No,” he had said when Starsky brought it back to their hotel room. “To begin with, you don’t have a cherry.”  
_You have other fruits. You are a fruit basket._

“But Hutch,” he had said, spinning his hands, “Everybody has a cherry. You know why? 'Cause a cherry is a concept, just like marriage is a concept, and the concept is that luck is sexy and sexiness is lucky, and—"  
 “A cherry is a fruit.”  
 “Great. Then this shirt is harmless.” He grabbed Hutch’s face and kissed him with an exaggerated ‘muah’ sound.  
"And marriage is an institution," Hutch called after him as he turned into the bathroom. _So institutionalize me_.

And thus Hutch had been a repeat victim of Starsky’s Law. He downgraded to begging that Starsky never, ever wear it in public.  
And here he was in a dubiously public place, chewing bubblegum and looking like a sun god.  
_How anyone can chew gum in this heat…_

He joined Starsky at the top, throwing a sweaty arm around his shoulder. Garish apparel aside, it was hard to resist him when he was this happy. He resigned himself to affection. In fact, Hutch had merely shushed him last night when, after too many Clover Clubs, Starsky introduced him to the doorman as “my Viking jackpot”.    
“You two going to the Liberace show?" he replied with a wink.  
Starsky bristled. “We MIGHT be. So what if we ARE. Maybe YOU oughta go. Maybe—“   
“No,” Hutch assured him, pulling Starsky into a waiting cab. “Caesar’s Palace, please.” 

The following morning, after they had sufficiently recovered, Hutch made it a point to prove himself worthy of his namesake.

The sun was starting to set, and the lights of Las Vegas brightened below them.  
“Look at that,” Starsky said.

Hutch absently moved his thumb across Starsky’s shoulder. The city looked like a pinball machine in the desert. Hutch would’ve preferred a dark forest of snow.

“Did you know…” Starsky said. When he started that way for the 15th time, Hutch found it hard to listen. Instead, he watched Starsky’s profile with familiar pleasure. “…and I figured it was just part of the movie….” _Tell me_ , Hutch thought, despite being unable to focus. “…slot machines in his family room…" _Such a pretty drama to his nose_. “…and Bugsy was actually neighbors with Bogie, but that was before…”  
 “Wow,” he said when he realized Starsky had stopped talking.

The boulders were taking on a new density in the dusk. He looked forward to being back in their hotel room, stretching on the blue carpet while Starsky got chip crumbs on the bed. Hutch would take a long shower. He would ask Starsky to wash his hair. And while it was still wet, he would fall asleep against his bare shoulder. The last thing he'd hear would be Starsky saying "I could win this, I could win us a hundred thousand bucks" as he watched _Name That Tune_.

“I love you,” Starsky said simply, drawing his hand around Hutch’s hip. It was so easy for him to say, like a lazy, warm wind. Hutch reached up and brushed his ear in response. They stood there until it was dark.

“Next time we’re here, we can see Tom Jones.”  
 “Next time,” Hutch replied, “we’re going camping in Oregon.”  
Starsky sighed, either dismayed at the thought of setting up a tent or pleased to imagine them trading vacations forever.  
“I’m hungry,” he said. “Ready to go?”  As if Hutch was the one keeping them there. As if a hike in 112 degree weather had been Hutch’s idea.

They started down the winding path. Hutch glanced behind him and caught the tilting sweep of Starsky’s shorts as he jumped over a small boulder. His endearingly goatish physicality tended towards comedy. Yet he could be so powerfully graceful, like a stag. That was Starsky. His daisy-picking brain could dry Hutch out. And then he could speak slowly at 3am, with a seriousness that restored Hutch to the darkest, richest pools of himself.

It was all there. The dazzling lights that rippled out into black dunes.

He turned around to find Starsky gone. Moments later, he emerged from the darkness, hopping on one foot while struggling to tie his shoe. As he caught up, Hutch held out his hands against Starsky’s stomach. “Wait a minute.”  
“You gotta pee?”  
Hutch shook his head. “Take off your shirt.”  
 Starsky snorted. “Not here, babe. The car’s not that far.”  
 Hutch started the job himself. “Look, I can’t say what I’m about to say while looking at that stupid shirt.” Then in a nervous murmur to himself: “Bad enough to be doing it in Vegas.”  
 Starsky laughed, but raised his arms in co-operation. Hutch tossed the shirt aside (beyond recovery, he hoped—“Hey!” Starsky cried) and stepped back, joining their hands.

He let out a tense breath, then startled. “Dammit, I should be on one knee,” he said almost inaudibly, lowering himself to the sand. “No, no, can’t see you down here.”  As he stood again, he saw Starsky’s expression had changed to shock. In his eyes, he saw something like a rising whimper. And then Hutch started talking and stuttering and running over his stutters, and he didn’t know what he was saying until Starsky crashed into him.  
“Yes, yes. Yes.”

They held each other for a long time, still enough that a lizard passed by unconcerned.  
 “I’m hungry,” Starsky said again, stepping back and wiping his cheeks. “You hungry?” He wiped Hutch’s too.

Hutch drove them back into the city. After admonishing him to keep his hands on the wheel or put a tragic end to this happy arrangement, Starsky fell asleep with his head against the open window. The radio played “Sunshine On My Shoulders”, which felt like a gift. And Starsky wasn’t awake to change the station.

Hutch glanced over at his sleeping form. His naked torso.  
“I guess your cherry paid off pretty good, huh?”

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. _My Cherry Paid Off..._ is a real T-shirt from 70s Las Vegas, but for _Castaways Hotel and Casino_ instead of _Caesar's Palace_. 
> 
> 2\. "Bugsy" refers to Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, a Jewish American mobster who was influential in developing the Vegas strip in the 1940s.


End file.
